This volume is part of the Studia Antiqua Australiensia series produced by the Ancient Cultures Research Centre at Macquarie University. The book was originally published in 1910, as Textes d'auteurs grecs et latins relatifs a l'Extreme-Orient depuis le IV siecle av. J.-C. jusqu'au XIVe siècle, to provide French translations for a compilation of Greek and Latin accounts that referred to China and the Far East. But as the print run was limited to 500 copies, the book became difficult to acquire. Consequently, when a network of scholars known as the International Union of Academies set out to examine the literary and archaeological evidence for contacts between the Mediterranean world and China, they decided to republish this work in English. Their objective was to make this important information accessible to a wider readership as a basis for further enquiry.
The 2010 edition is offered with an English translation by J. Sheldon, who has revised the ancient sources. G. Fox translated the original French introduction by C. into English, which includes a brief bibliography that reveals the status of scholarship a century ago. In addition, S. Lieu has provided a new foreword to explain the value of this material for contemporary research.
One of the reasons why the distant East is marginalised as a subject of interest for Classical historians is that mainstream scholarship remains largely unaware of the range and volume of the surviving evidence, including source testimony from Greek and Latin writers. This volume addresses this issue by presenting extracts from Greek, Roman and Byzantine accounts that describe, or allude to, eastern Asia.
The compilation collects and presents the relevant source passages without comment, although occasionally footnotes provide details about variant manuscripts that offer alternative terms or phrasing. Many Graeco-Roman accounts of the Far East contain exotic place names that can be connected to known sites and regions, but the translator and editor have not commented on this issue. They have thereby avoided lengthy interpretative discussions of differing academic opinions. This is not a deficiency, as these issues are addressed in the accompanying volume, J. Sheldon, Commentary on George Coedès' Texts of Greek and Latin Authors on the Far East (2012).
The volume is a high-quality publication with clear, well-produced text and maps. The introduction by C. offers a brief summary and chronological overview of Greek, Roman and Byzantine accounts of eastern Asia. The main body of the book contains 161 pages of text extracted from the works of 92 authors. These sources cover a thousand years of history from Ctesias in the fourth century b.c.e. to Byzantine writers such as Nicephorus Gregoras in the fourteenth century. This section includes original texts in Greek, Latin and Syriac which are presented in parallel columns alongside their English translations. The compiled texts include references and allusions to the Far East in literary works as well as the accounts of geographers, historians and other specialist writers, such as doctors or authorities concerned with religious matters. The translations are literal and when an author writes in differing genres or styles, these passages appear as separate entries. For example: ‘Seneca the Philosopher’ and ‘Seneca the Tragedian’ (p. 8).
The texts are arranged chronologically according to the author, rather than the events as they occurred. Consequently, Strabo is located with the Augustan era authors, although some of his accounts deal with earlier information and incidents, for example when Strabo refers to the Greek Kings of Bactria who ruled in the second century b.c.e. he records that they ‘were extending their kingdom as far as the Seres’ (Silk People) (p. 4). It is significant that Strabo dismissed the testimony of Roman merchants who had reached the Ganges as ‘merely private citizens and of no use regarding the history of the places they have seen’ (Strabo 15.4). This explains why the surviving Greek and Roman texts offer an incomplete view of the Far East and individual accounts are often confused or distorted by other preconceptions, including long-standing ideas from edge-of-the-world ethnographic traditions, popular mythology, literary topos, poetic imagery or imperial ideology.
The first definite reference to Han China occurs in an anonymous Greek merchant guide to ports in the Indian Ocean called the Periplus Maris Erythraei (Periplus of the Erythraean Sea) (c. 50 c.e.). The author refers to ‘Thinai’ and describes the operation of the Silk Roads leading to Afghanistan through which ‘cotton and textiles and silk are transported on foot to Barygaza through Bactria’ (P.M.E. 64). Chinese accounts record how Roman subjects were received at the Han capital Luoyang in 166 c.e., but reports of these contacts do not survive in Greek and Roman texts.Footnote 1
Some of the entries could have been placed in a slightly different order, for example the Periplus Maris Erythraei better fits a date of about 50 c.e. rather than its current entry at the ‘end of the first century ad’. The later date reflects views around the time of the original publication (1910) which the current editors have decided to maintain.
The volume contains an index of sources and a geographical index, which should be particularly valuable for scholars trying to gather and identify variant Greek and Roman names for distant eastern sites. A further addition is the inclusion of four outline maps produced by C. These maps depict the distant East as described by classical authorities including the Greek geographer Strabo and the Latin geographer Pomponius Mela. A third map gives an impression of the distant East as described by the Periplus Maris Erythraei (c. 50 c.e.), while a final map suggests the possible course through Central Asia taken by a team of Roman merchants sent by a Syrian businessman named Maes Titianos (c. 100 c.e.). Maes wrote an account of their journey which has not survived, but was used by contemporary Greek geographers including Claudius Ptolemy.
The volume presents scholars interested in Greek or Roman knowledge with a range of themes to identify, analyse and discuss. For example, the account by Pliny the Elder of the tall, red-haired blue-eyed ‘Seres’ who may be Tocharians descended from the people of the Tarim Mummies (p. 14; N.H. 6.88) or the reference to the Great Wall encircling the Seres offered by Ammianus (p. 95; R.G. 23.6.63). Perhaps the most significant reference is the claim made by Pliny that ‘each year India and the Seres and that peninsula [Arabia] receive from our empire 100 million sesterces’ (p. 15; N.H. 12.84). This figure is equivalent to about one-tenth of Roman state-spending and if it is accurate, it has serious implications for the study of the imperial economy.Footnote 2
Overall, this subject has deserved more attention, and this volume will assist this process by presenting the modern scholar with an important reference work and starting point for the study of the global connections of the ancient past. It is destined to provoke significant debate and become an essential tool in any future interdisciplinary research concerning the Graeco-Roman oikoumene and the wider ancient world.
